A Venture Capital Firm Just Named An Algorithm To Its Board Of Directors — Here's What It Actually Does

Deep Knowledge Ventures, a firm that focuses on age-related
disease drugs and regenerative medicine projects, says the
program, called VITAL, can make investment recommendations about
life sciences firms by poring over large amounts of data.

Just like other members of the board, the algorithm gets to
vote on whether the firm makes an investment in a specific
company or not. The program will be
the sixth member of DKV's board.

Groome says it has already
helped approved two investment decisions (though has not
yet cast its first vote), both of which resemble its own
function: In Silico Medicine, which
develops computer-assisted methods for drug
discovery in aging research; and In Silico's partner firm Pathway
Pharmaceuticals, which employs a platform called OncoFinder
to select and rate personalized cancer
therapies.

"It's not what you’d call AI at this stage, but that
is the long-term goal," Groome said.